“After numerous meetings starting way back in August 2022, it is clear that the Ministry for Health (MFH) not only lacks respect towards nurses and midwives but is determined to humiliate and demotivate the whole nursing and midwifery workforce through this sectorial agreement,” the MUMN told nurses a few days back.

“It is a well-known fact for all nurses and midwives that the office of the Permanent Secretary is eager to threaten nurses and midwives through his regular memo quoting court sentences so as to scare nurses and midwives from abiding by the directives,” it said.

“Repeatedly we are told several times during the meetings that now (all of a sudden) the country has very limited finances available for the nurses and the midwives and the deficit of the country is on the increase. We are of course never told that Steward is to blame.”

Directives given to the nurses include but are not limited to:

“Do not participate in any elective operation except those operations related to oncology patients, pediatric cases, and life-threatening cases.”

“Code Orange and Code Red calls should be responded to with an MDH Ambulance, not a private contractor ambulance.”

“ED nurses are only to perform patient transfers of ESI-1 patients, patients needing sedation, transfers to ITU and Cath Lab, and transfers of clinically unstable patients.”

“All washing of patients by nurses/midwives is to be stopped immediately. This directive is exempted at ITU, NPICU, and HDUs and patients with several indwelling devices.”

Other directives also included not answering the phone, not taking any messages, and not calling patients from the waiting room. 

The full directives will be published shortly.

Meanwhile, these are the demands being made by MUMN:

“MUMN has to register a dispute once again and will not attend any further meetings unless the government through the MFH accepts the following proposals:

1. No form of an appraisal report is to be included in the government’s counter-proposal
2. The Salary restructuring included in the MUMN proposal has to be included
3. There has to be no robotic or EVS (Palm Reader)
4. The one-year interval on the 6.6 hrs extra to come into effect from 1st  January 2023
5. CPD has to be with the €800 bonus as one time only for MUMN to accept the €1165 and a guarantee in writing that other professions will not receive more
6. All MUMN proposals such as tax credits on overtime, pension schemes, on-call, meal allowances, etc are to be included in the government’s counter-proposals
7. All allowances are to include the nurses and midwives in all grades including Staff Nurses, Midwives, Senior Staff Nurses, and Senior Midwives, and not just from Charge Nurses upwards as is continuously being proposed by the government”

Tag someone that needs to know about this